Backup of photos and videos is a very important issue, specially when you have a huge quantity of files. If there’s a failure on your computer (which is not so rare to happen), you can easily reinstall the operating system, but will lose the files. I don’t recommend for you to save all of your files on your computer because the memory will sooner or later be full and the PC will be very slow.

Saving your files on external drives, there’s also the risk of losing all the files if the drive fails. It’s always advisable to make backup of our most important files, if they are on the computer or on an external drive. There’s several solutions for this issue:

External drive

Online Backup Service

Cloud

1. External drive

If the files are on the computer, you can make a copy to the external drive. But if you want to make a backup of your external drive, logically you have to backup to another external drive.

The cheaper option is to buy two external drives and make always a backup from one to the other. Both Windows and MacOs have functionalities to make a backup.

There’s also the NAS system, which allows to save files for the clients of a network (it can be a private ome network, or an office. These systems, alloe to take more than one hard drives and they can make an automatic update between discs and also with the computer. This type of system is more costly, but it’san automatic and safer process.

Advantages:

Depending on which type of storage, it’s cheap, because you only need to invest on external drives to save the files.

Disadvantages:

In case of a theft or fire, you can lose the computer and the external drive, thus not having the option to recover your files.

2. Online Backup Service

There are several Internet services that through a monthly subscription, they make an automatic Backup of your computer. I personally use Backblaze which costs 5€/month and I can have an unlimited and automatic Backup of all of my files. If I l loose a file or want to have a file on another computer, I can recover it by accessing my Backblaze account.

Advantages:

You can access the files on any computer, by accessing your account on your Internet Backup Service.

You can recover the files from the Internet, though it’s a slow process.

Disadvantages:

This type of services have a monthly subscription, which is around 5€/month.

It’s a slow process, especially the first backup.

There’s always the question of the file’s privacy.

3. Cloud

This type of storage, is not really a Backup, but for many of you, it can be enough. You can select the files to save on a service, such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive and if there’s a hard drive failure, you can recover through the company’s website.

If you still don’t have a Dropbox account, click on the link below and earn 500MB free!

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Advantages:

It’s a free and simple service

As the files are stored on the Internet, they are protected against any hardware failure.

Easy to create folders and share them with other people.

Disadvantages:

Many services offer only some gigabytes of storage. If you want more storage, a service like Dropbox costs 10€/month and you can only have 1TB.

There’s always the question of the file’s privacy.

Conclusion

Depending on the quantity and importance of your files, there are different Backup solutions for everyone.

If the file quantity is only some GB, the free Cloud services are enough.

If on the other hand, you have big files, there are several solution, depending on the convenience and how much are you willing to pay. I recommend that you have at least two Backups on different locations, on a physical location or on the Internet. You can use two external hard drives on two different loctions or use a combination of a physical and Internet Backup system, using a NAS or only normal external hard drives.

I use an external hard drive and Backblaze. I’m really happy, because the costs are relatively low, but if if anything happens, I will have to wait a long time until I download all of the files from the Internet. On the future I want to have two external hard drives, on two different locations and still use Backblaze, for a third level of security, if everything else fails.

Do you make any Backup of your files? Which method do you use? Leave a comment below!